400-attorney firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon,
intellectual property litigator Adam Seitz was
ready to strike out on his own. To do so, however,
he had to pay a pound of flesh. More than a
pound, actually.

“I lost a lot of weight that first month,” saysSeitz of the February 2012 launch of Erise IP inOverland Park, Kan.

Seitz and co-founder Eric Buresh, who also leftShook Hardy, didn’t get much sleep while theygot their boutique firm off the ground. “Therewas a very big learning curve on everythingassociated with running a business,” says Seitz,“from the simple side of, ‘OK, you have to do allthis paperwork to register your business,’ [to] themuch more complex side of setting up all yourcomputers and your accounting systems, and allthe insurance and everything else that you haveto have to be open and make sure your employeesare taken care of.”But would clients trust a boutique to get thesame results as a big firm? “It was a humongouschallenge to convince people to believe in ourvision,” says Seitz. Their trial strategy: “Instead ofoverturning every rock, instead of burning everyfield and trying to go through every possibletheory, we’re going to identify our best ones, andwe’re going to focus on getting out of the case asquick as possible,” he says.

Seitz also wanted the firm to embody the legalphilosophy of some fairly famous lawyers. “If you